In order to shake up my life a bit, I'm saying yes to life in the new year. I know it's not a new thing. Books have been written about this phenomenon, self-help "thing". While I'm not a big "self-helper", I am slowly realizing that I need to do something simple and positive to create some new and enriching opportunities in my life; I need a change and I need it now! Saying yes to whatever opportunities arise seems like it will be the perfect thing.
For those of you who don't understand what saying yes to life is (I tend to coin my own phrases a lot and then can't figure out why people don't understand what I am talking about, that and I guess I talk fast. But I digress...), saying yes to life means I will say yes to pretty much every opportunity, socially, workwise, family, anything. In short, this is your chance to ask me to do whatever wild thing your brains can cook up (for me that would be going out of my house and staying up past 10 pm on a week night; I told you I need some major change in my life. I'm a dud right now.)
So yes, I'm doing this to get myself out of a little bit of a funk I have been in for the past year. Working on a project motivates me and like I mentioned in my previous blog posts, my big, epic project ended in 2013. After that, I'm not going to lie, I was pretty discombobulated with my identity as a filmmaker and a mother as my son is getting older (definitely one of the reasons I'm writing this blog.) The following year pretty much tired me out (remember what I wrote about fundraising and selling myself, or trying to).
Life, while fun and great, can become a simple list of task after task, a series of to do lists. In my life, I especially feel the weight of this monotony at the end of the year, during the whirl of holidays, parties, and family birthdays. I get completely tuckered out.
Now that I have a built in break (and my son is visiting his grandparents so I have very little responsibility), I am able to take stock of what I need. I'm also reading Amy Poehler's fabulous memoir, "Yes, Please" right now and I realized that this is precisely what I need to do, treat life like an improv sketch and say motherfucking YES to whatever comes my way. What a great way for me to get re-energized and have some fun in the process.
As such, please note, I am saying yes to life this year and will be creating and saying yes to any and all sustaining, enriching, and most importantly, FUN opportunities. I am committed to working on any projects with people I enjoy being and working with, projects I believe in that make a positive difference in the world, meeting new, fun people, having exciting, interesting, fun, new experiences in new and old places with friends and acquaintances I already know, and doing a whole lot of writing.
Bring it 2015! Here's to saying yes to life and staying up past 10pm! Now I must go out take out the garbage! YES!
Monday, December 29, 2014
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Oberservation #8- Verite
I need to write this after watching Frederick Wiseman's latest verite opus, National Gallery. So many feelings went through my mind watching this film.
Initially, watching the film gave me chills. It felt like home. I almost cried seeing someone capture society with a similar set of eyes as myself. I am a constant observer which is why I love the medium of verite. I love capturing human interaction, how groups interact, and institutions function. It helps me better understand the world and myself.
Watching a verite film about an institution, especially one as high profile and establishment as The National Gallery, is fascinating. While I loved seeing the art and the educational programs the museum has to offer in action, I really loved watching the business meetings. I loved that the director of the museum scoffs at the marketing person and that he wants a say in all events that happen near "his" museum. I simply love watching business meetings as an outsider, seeing that all arts nonprofits, no matter how big, have the same tussles about money, ego, programming, territory, etc. Fascinating stuff, to me at least. Makes me feel like my path in the world is not as small as I think it is.
Then, as I watched, I started to get very sad. I got sad that verite has such a small audience. Only I and a handful of folks over the age of 70 were in the theater. How can verite films survive with a sparse audience like this? Hardly anyone even knows what verite means these days. I, myself, had to change my own film's marketing materials to read "observational" instead of verite because people had trouble understanding what I meant. I am sad that "reality" television and "verite" are thought of as the same thing by many.
Then as the film went on, my feelings of fascination and sadness turned to frustration, anger, and sadly, boredom. I say this because the film is three hours long. I had no idea of the length when I entered. Fortunately, my son went over to a friend's house after school on the day I went otherwise I would have been getting angry, worried texts from him about why I was late (I was driving afternoon carpool that week; the glamorous life of an artist mom). I am blaming myself as I never checked the running time on the film before I went; I simply figured that a verite film has to be 1 hour 30 min or everyone would run screaming from the theater or be asleep. I figured wrong.
I have to say that at 1 hour 30 minutes into the film, I was ready for it to be finished. It felt very repetitive after that and covered much of the same ground. As such, as a verite filmmaker (director/producer/editor), I got a bit angry and frustrated. Here I am slogging away on my films, looking for ways to tell my stories in the most efficient way possible, "killing my darlings" many times over, and Mr. Wiseman is taking his sweet, sweet, and in my eyes, unnecessary time, saying the same thing over and over. Watching this go on and on, made me worried for the state of verite film. How we will we keep our very small audience with films of this length?
Making verite stories are so important as they put a mirror up to society and forces it to see and come to terms with itself. No other form of storytelling does that. However, it's precisely the verite stories that are the most difficult to make; they take time to follow the course of the subjects, usually many years. They cost a lot of money to fund the crew(s) that does the following. Lastly, these types of films have the most limited audience of all documentaries, I think. And I have to say, I get it. They usually include no narration, little titling and sit-down interviews; not a lot of the typical structure that gives more standard documentary shape. Even I, a self-proclaimed verite lover, has to be in the exact right mood to see one of these films, my own included.
I don't how to inspire verite appreciation or if that is even necessary. I just don't want this medium to die out.
Initially, watching the film gave me chills. It felt like home. I almost cried seeing someone capture society with a similar set of eyes as myself. I am a constant observer which is why I love the medium of verite. I love capturing human interaction, how groups interact, and institutions function. It helps me better understand the world and myself.
Watching a verite film about an institution, especially one as high profile and establishment as The National Gallery, is fascinating. While I loved seeing the art and the educational programs the museum has to offer in action, I really loved watching the business meetings. I loved that the director of the museum scoffs at the marketing person and that he wants a say in all events that happen near "his" museum. I simply love watching business meetings as an outsider, seeing that all arts nonprofits, no matter how big, have the same tussles about money, ego, programming, territory, etc. Fascinating stuff, to me at least. Makes me feel like my path in the world is not as small as I think it is.
Then, as I watched, I started to get very sad. I got sad that verite has such a small audience. Only I and a handful of folks over the age of 70 were in the theater. How can verite films survive with a sparse audience like this? Hardly anyone even knows what verite means these days. I, myself, had to change my own film's marketing materials to read "observational" instead of verite because people had trouble understanding what I meant. I am sad that "reality" television and "verite" are thought of as the same thing by many.
Then as the film went on, my feelings of fascination and sadness turned to frustration, anger, and sadly, boredom. I say this because the film is three hours long. I had no idea of the length when I entered. Fortunately, my son went over to a friend's house after school on the day I went otherwise I would have been getting angry, worried texts from him about why I was late (I was driving afternoon carpool that week; the glamorous life of an artist mom). I am blaming myself as I never checked the running time on the film before I went; I simply figured that a verite film has to be 1 hour 30 min or everyone would run screaming from the theater or be asleep. I figured wrong.
I have to say that at 1 hour 30 minutes into the film, I was ready for it to be finished. It felt very repetitive after that and covered much of the same ground. As such, as a verite filmmaker (director/producer/editor), I got a bit angry and frustrated. Here I am slogging away on my films, looking for ways to tell my stories in the most efficient way possible, "killing my darlings" many times over, and Mr. Wiseman is taking his sweet, sweet, and in my eyes, unnecessary time, saying the same thing over and over. Watching this go on and on, made me worried for the state of verite film. How we will we keep our very small audience with films of this length?
Making verite stories are so important as they put a mirror up to society and forces it to see and come to terms with itself. No other form of storytelling does that. However, it's precisely the verite stories that are the most difficult to make; they take time to follow the course of the subjects, usually many years. They cost a lot of money to fund the crew(s) that does the following. Lastly, these types of films have the most limited audience of all documentaries, I think. And I have to say, I get it. They usually include no narration, little titling and sit-down interviews; not a lot of the typical structure that gives more standard documentary shape. Even I, a self-proclaimed verite lover, has to be in the exact right mood to see one of these films, my own included.
I don't how to inspire verite appreciation or if that is even necessary. I just don't want this medium to die out.
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